


the mess inside

by fitztomania



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Death, Don't Try This At Home, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Home Surgery, Minor Injuries, kind of? I've never used that tag before
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:47:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16390592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitztomania/pseuds/fitztomania
Summary: Two years after a messy breakup, Ronan reaches out to an estranged Adam to ask for a grisly favor.





	1. a rabid dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He needs you. You heard how he sounded. How would you feel, if it was the other way around? Why are you being such a dick?
> 
> What the hell is the matter with you?

Ronan was sitting out on the back porch steps when Adam pulled up in the BMW. He was dangling what looked like a half-empty bottle of Tennessee Honey between his outstretched knees, and he looked like hell.

Adam took a moment to just close his eyes and take a deep breath before turning off the engine.

_He needs you. He called you because he needs you. This isn't the time for—whatever._

Ronan didn't look up at the sound of the door clunking shut, or as he approached, still gazing out over the field behind the house with that thousand-yard stare. That made it a little easier. "Hey," Adam said.

Ronan lifted his chin. "How was the drive?"

Adam couldn't stop the start of a sarcastic laugh from huffing out of his mouth, but he tamped it down as soon as he could. "The drive—the drive was fine. Where's Opal?"

"Matthew and Declan took her camping for the weekend," Ronan said, and then shrugged. "Figured she can't do much damage tromping around in the woods."

"Yeah, I guess not."

Ronan's T-shirt was a shredded mess, and on this side it was plastered to his ribs with sticky, drying blood. There were bruises edging his jaw, puffy and painful-looking. His knuckles were white on the bottle as he took a slug from it, and his hand was shaking a little. Adam tried not to stare.

"Where is it?"

Ronan swallowed hard and pointed with the hand that held the bottle. There were marks on his knuckles that looked like they'd been torn with teeth. "It's locked in."

Adam followed the trajectory of Ronan's finger over the field to the long barn. The fog was just starting to burn off of the grass, but there were still pockets here and there where the morning sun didn't reach. It was the kind of Henrietta morning Adam missed, and hated that he missed. You didn't get them in DC.

"Okay." He let out a long breath. "How should I. . . do this?"

"There's, um. A gun. On top of the kitchen cabinets." Ronan finally looked up at him then, quick and glancing off like it hurt. "It's Dean's. I don't know if it's loaded."

"Dean?"

"Gray."

"Ah."

"I called him first," Ronan added, "but he and Maura are still honeymooning."

"Right."

Ronan was twisting his fingers around the neck of the bottle in a way that made Adam feel like he was the nerve-wracking factor here, not the nightmare taking up residence in the barn.

"Will that work? A gun?"

Another glance, up to Adam's eyes and away. Adam wanted to take Ronan's face in his hands and make him look. "In my experience. But you could—you could do something else. There's knives, or—I think there's rope in the barn. I know you hate—"

"It's fine."

Adam looked back out to the barn in the silence. As he watched, he heard a distant thump, and the door shook slightly.

"Thank you," Ronan said quietly, and Adam couldn't stand it anymore.

"God, Ronan," Adam said, clomping up the porch steps and yanking the door open, "just shut up."

The Lynch kitchen was dark, but it looked almost the exact same as it had the last time Adam had been in it over a year ago. Looking around was like a spot-the-differences picture—here a new toaster, there a colorful knife block Ronan almost certainly hadn't picked out himself. . . and, proudly displayed in splotchily painted frames in the window over the big farm sink, two perfect Ronan Lynch forgeries: Opal's birth certificate and adoption decree.

Something pushed its way up Adam's throat looking at them, so he looked away.

He felt around on top of the dusty cabinets until he found the gun. It was small and utilitarian, utterly unassuming in its quiet threat, and it was loaded. God, but he hated guns.

_This isn't about you, it's about Ronan. He needs you to do this. Stop being such a whiny baby, you're not a teenager anymore._

He let the door clatter shut behind him as he stomped back on to the porch. Ronan looked up and winced at the sight of the gun in his hand. "Adam—"

"I said _shut up,_ Lynch."

"You don't—you don't have to do this. I can do it."

"I just drove three hours to get here because you said you couldn't," Adam snapped, disengaging the safety. "Now you can do it?"

Ronan fell silent. Shame immediately washed over Adam. _He needs you. You heard how he sounded. How would you feel, if it was the other way around? Why are you being such a dick?_

_What the hell is the matter with you?_

He bit back on an apology and stepped down off the porch. "Are you coming, or no?"

Ronan sucked in his lower lip and shook his head, and Adam remembered how he had sounded on the phone, the way his voice broke over Adam's name. "I can't."

Instead of saying _Fine_ —instead of biting, like his first instinct always was with Ronan—Adam said "Okay. I'll be back—I'll be back."

His sneakers were almost silent in the long grass. The soil underneath them was springy and warm, like a chocolate cake right out of the oven. The cicadas were starting to buzz. He could smell Aurora's tiger lilies blooming at the edge of the woods. It was almost disarmingly pastoral—the only thing grounding him was the weight of the gun, held in his sweaty right palm.

Adam laid his hand on the bar locking the steel door. There was a long, dried smear of blood on it. He leaned in close with his good ear to listen.

Inside the barn, something was breathing quietly.

Adam looked back at Ronan, swigging down whiskey on the porch. The marks on his face stood out even from here; his skin was deathly pale in comparison. He looked like a ghoul. Like a murder victim.

He pushed up the crossbar and slid the heavy door aside with a crash.

The barn was dark, shockingly dark against the bright golden light of the field, and it took a moment for Adam to even see what he was looking at. Then another moment to fully register what he was looking at.

Adam had seen a lot of the heavier stuff that Ronan dreamed. After his mom died and Gansey resurrected, after the acid pool and the strangling and his own dark dream blood bubbling out of his mouth and eyes, it was like a tap you couldn't turn off. He created things without meaning to, without control.

He'd thought Ronan would get a handle on it eventually. The evidence that he hadn't was staring him in the face. _It's you,_ Ronan had said, _but it's not you._ At the time, he'd been stuttering, flustered, sounding so completely unlike himself that Adam had wondered for half a second who was calling him from Ronan's phone, and he hadn't been sure what Ronan meant—what, exactly, he was walking into—but now, he was hard-pressed to say how Ronan could have been more descriptive.

Adam Parrish gazed into the darkness of the long barn, and the wild, murderous eyes of his 18-year-old self gazed back.

 

* * *

 

 

A scream rang out in the quiet—Adam's voice, high and feral, shrieking, _"Ronan! Ronan! Ronan!"_

Then, three shots, followed by one of the loudest silences Ronan had ever heard. He finished off the bottle and dropped it into the grass, rising to his feet and stepping slowly toward the long barn.

When he was about twenty feet away, when he couldn't stand it anymore, he called out, "Adam?"

"Yeah," Adam answered, tight and thin on the morning breeze, and Ronan closed his eyes. "It's dead. I'm, uh—I'm gonna try to wrap it in something. Do you still have those feed bags?"

"Yeah, they're, um. Under Dad's work bench."

"Do you have a—a hole ready?"

A stab of guilt cut through Ronan, that he was once again counting on Adam to clean up his messes, that Adam Parrish was so practiced at burying bodies. "No. I'll get started."

 

* * *

 

For a long time—probably not as long as it felt like, but longer than he should have—Adam stared at the body, twisting one of the dusty feed bags in his hands.

It was so _thin_. Had he ever been that thin? Bones protruding like so many elbows, ribs visible through his skin, cheeks pinched in like a zombie's? He tried not to look at pictures from his teenage years, and had spent much of his life avoiding his own reflection whenever he could. But he supposed Ronan, if no one else, could be counted on for accuracy.

No seatbelt strap scar, though there wouldn't be. No twisting river dividing its right eyebrow neatly in two. That was a little jarring.

It— _he_ —this Other Adam—was mostly naked, except for a pair of green plaid shorts Adam recognized, whose counterparts were now faded and all but frayed to shreds in the back of his underwear drawer. Its mouth was smeared with blood, and its fingernails were so caked with it they looked black. There were faint marks up by its shoulder—Adam's shoulder—purplish and round. It occurred to Adam that this particular dream probably hadn't started off as a nightmare.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

He knelt down next to it, and knocked something with his knee—the gun. He'd dropped it in the dirt when he saw the nightmare go down, almost _thrown_ it, like his body had only been able to stand holding it as long as it was useful. He picked it up gingerly now, engaging the safety and laying it back down carefully, as far away as he could stretch.

All three of his shots had landed in the chest, and the first two hadn't been clean. Adam touched the edge of one of the ragged holes, feeling his mind bend. He felt like he should apologize, somehow. He wanted to scream, or cry, or laugh, or spit.

He heard the telltale sound of a shovel striking dirt and let out a long, shaky exhale, trying to shove the halves of his brain back together.

 _It's okay,_ he told himself. _You've done this before. And it's not you, you know that. Just. . . dreamstuff. In a you shape._

He had done this before—a lot, actually—but it had only been human the one time, and he hadn't been able to handle it then, either. At least this time he'd been able to prepare. Sort of. A little.

And at least this time, Ronan was giving him space.

He took a few deep breaths, tried to picture the oxygen soaking out from his center into his arms, legs, fingers, toes, like Calla had taught him. Tried to picture himself changing colors. Stoplight red to functional green.

 _I'm cool,_ he told himself firmly. _I'm cool._

Then he got to work.

 

* * *

 

Adam joined him a little bit later, when about a third of the grave was dug and Ronan was standing in the middle of it, looking muddy and strung out. He eyed the shovel in Adam's hands.

"You don't have to do this part," he said. Adam shrugged and got in the hole with him.

"I kinda thought you'd have it done before I got here," Adam said, pushing his shovel into the dirt. His hands felt too comfortable around the handle, like they remembered this was where they belonged, and the familiarity pricked at the life he'd made for himself like a needle tapping against a balloon.

Ronan took a long moment before answering, stomping the blade of his shovel down into some stubborn roots. "Didn't want to turn my back on it."

"Except to dig the whiskey out of the cellar, huh?"

Ronan's mirthless single _ha_ blended with the loud crack of the root snapping. "Retract the claws, Parrish," he said. "Let's just get this thing dug and get you back on the road."

Adam heaved a shovelful of earth out of the hole and watched it explode a few feet away. "Sure," he said, knowing full well he shouldn't, "I know you're reaching your limit."

Ronan whirled to look at him, finally, full in the face. "Don't. Okay? Just don't."

"What? It's true. Can't stand to be around me more than an hour at a time—"

"I get it," Ronan said through his teeth. "This is hard. I get it, all right? I'm sorry I asked you to do this. I'm sorry I asked you to see me. It's fucked, I know. I'm sorry. I'm trying to make it as—as easy on you as I can."

Adam laughed then, too, loud and bitter. "Like you've ever cared if it was _easy_ on me."

"What do you want from me here?" Ronan asked desperately, and Adam could remember another fight when Ronan had asked him that, but his face was different now, pleading instead of furious. It only incensed him more. "I'm not gonna fight you, Adam—"

"What do I—it's been _two years,_ Ronan!" The warning lights were flashing in Adam's head _(you swore you weren't going to do this, high road, high road)_ but he couldn’t stop himself. "You _fucking. Owe_ me. I want—I _deserve_ some kind of _fucking explanation!_ "

"Yes!" Ronan shouted, and it caught Adam so unexpectedly he actually staggered backward. " _Yes._ You do. And you'll get it, I promise, just not—when I'm kind of drunk, and covered in viscera, and—and—digging a _literal grave_. For _you._ "

The words left Adam reeling. He would have been less surprised if Ronan had actually hit him.

_Yes._

_You'll get it. I promise._

Ronan's mouth snapped shut almost audibly. He looked miserable. After a moment, he said again, "I'm sorry. Just. Let's finish this."

Adam's own mouth tasted like a battery. "Fine," he replied tonelessly, looking back down at his shovel.

It didn't feel like losing, but it didn't feel good, either.

 

* * *

 

The sun was high in the sky by the time Ronan and Adam were hefting the last of the dirt into Not-Adam's hasty grave, and the unpleasant film of sweat and earth baking into every exposed inch of Adam's skin was making him itchy and irritable.

 _This is what you came from,_ a nasty little voice in his head reminded him, _lest you forget._

"Do you want to say something?"

Adam glanced over at him sharply. "What, am I supposed to _thank_ you?"

"No—Jesus, _no_. I meant." Ronan gestured at the grave. "For him."

"Oh."

"You don't have to."

Adam swallowed hard. "Do you? Usually?"

Ronan rolled his neck and jammed his torn-up hands into his pockets, and nodded. _Catholic._

Adam cast around in his mind for something, anything, that he could say in front of Ronan. "Okay. Um. I'm sorry—" _sorry I shot you? sorry you were a rabid dog that had to be put down? sorry we're burying you wrapped in bags in a hole in the forest?_ "—about, um, this." He looked to Ronan. "Maybe it should be you."

Ronan held his gaze for a moment, expression unreadable, and Adam thought surely this was when Ronan would tell him to fuck off; but then he dropped down into a squat, lowered his head, and laid his right hand on the mound of earth. _"Bene valeas et placideque quiescas,"_ he murmured.

Adam's eyes were on Ronan's mangled knuckles, and before he could stop himself he was saying, "Probably nicer than he deserves."

Ronan rose unsteadily, dusting off his hands. "Not his fault."

"I guess not."

Adam stood by the grave a little bit longer while Ronan brought the shovels back to the shed at the edge of the forest, arms gripped to his chest. He felt himself slipping, sliding desperately down the incline of what just a few hours ago had been the solid stone foundation of his better judgement.

Ronan cleared his throat behind Adam, and Adam turned to face him. His face was carefully arranged to give nothing away.

"Listen," he said, reaching up to scrub his hand through his too-long-for-Ronan hair, "I know you probably don't want to stick around, but, um. Do you want to come inside and sit down for a minute? I mean, I dragged you all the way out here, least I can do is make you some coffee or something."

Adam's fingers twitched. "Um."

"No is an option, Parrish."

"Yes," Adam blurted out. "That. . . would be good."

Ronan chewed at his lip and nodded once, twice, more to himself than Adam, then jerked his head toward the house.

Adam followed him back to the porch wordlessly, and when Ronan yanked the kitchen door open, he heard himself ask, "Do you think I could use your shower?"

Ronan's eyebrows flicked up for half a second. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, of course. I should've offered."

Inside, they sat down at the table to pull off their dirt-caked boots. Adam scratched at the filth on his hands, frowning to himself. He felt Ronan's eyes on him for a long moment before he cleared his throat and said, "Why don't you go do that, I'll put a pot on."

Adam looked up. Now that he was sitting in front of Ronan, under a proper light—out of the stark contrast of the forest's edge—he could see more ragged, sticky gouges beneath Ronan's right eye, spreading into deep purple bruising. And there, just under his ear on the same side, more bruises like the ones on Not-Adam's shoulder. Unmistakably bite marks. His insides did a complicated dance.

Ronan, as if noticing the line of Adam's eyes, touched his fingers self-consciously to his neck.

Adam pushed himself back from the table, hard, and stood. "Everything still in the same place?"

Ronan nodded.

"Awesome."

He did _try_ not to stomp up the stairs. He tried really hard, even if it didn't sound like it.

The upstairs bathroom, like the kitchen, looked almost exactly the same—same latch-hook rug, same seashell soaps, same sign over the toilet reading "OFFICE"—but there were little traces of Opal here, too. Hair ties and clips in neat little cups by the sink. Sparkling bluebird sun-catchers in the window. A mossy green bathrobe hanging off the back of the door, dwarfed by the fluffy slate-gray one hanging next to it. For the millionth time that morning, Adam swallowed around the hard lump of bitterness in his throat.

He could have had this, if Ronan had let him. He could have had his own bathrobe hanging on the door, could've fussed over Opal's hair in the morning. He reached up to rub the sting out of his eyes, forgetting how grimy his hands were.

The water started off too cold and then got too hot, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to cringe away or turn the knob. He stood under the spray for a long time, motionless, watching his skin turn from pink to red, and he only picked up the soap—same big bottle of Dr. Bronner's on the corner of the tub, same almond scent—when the water started to get cold again. He scrubbed and scrubbed and _scrubbed_ like he could scrub his skin clean off and emerge from it like a molted snake.

Adam had seen a lot of Ronan's nightmares—more than his fair share, really—and after that first shocking time in the church, he knew how. . . _human_. . . they could look. He'd wondered a long time ago if any of them ever looked like him.

 _Never,_ Ronan had murmured, rocked against him in the dark, mouth warm and wet on Adam's ear. _You're only in good dreams. And sometimes the hot ones._

 _Only sometimes?_ Adam had asked, smiling.

_Only when you're not here. Rather have the real thing._

Another swallow, another fizz of acid. He turned the water off.

When he had toweled dry and sat on the lip of the tub, staring blankly at the Lynch family's toothbrush cup, there was a quiet knock on the door, and Ronan's voice, uncharacteristically gentle. "Adam?"

Adam didn't move.

"I uh, I left some clean clothes out here for you. I figured. . . you probably don't want to put the other ones back on."

He was right. Adam didn’t want to wear the other ones ever again. He didn't even want to _look_ at them. He just wanted them to spontaneously combust in the corner of the bathroom.

"Anyway, there's, uh, coffee downstairs. And toast. And bacon. In case you're, you know. Hungry."

Adam nodded, knuckles pressed hard against his teeth. Then, because he realized Ronan couldn't see him, he said, in a rusty voice like he hadn't spoken in years, "Okay."

"Okay," Ronan said, and Adam knew he was looking down and rubbing the back of his head. "I'll see you downstairs."

He didn't know how long he sat there after that, listening to his drying hair drip on the porcelain, but when he finally got up, his fingers weren't pruny anymore.


	2. time for honesty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Him and that word: "Yes". He should need a license to say that word. There should at least be some sort of strike system.

The clothes Ronan had left folded neatly on the hall carpet were his: red boxers that were a little too snug in the waist now, a soft blue T-shirt he'd missed, and a pair of gray sweats.  The lump started to rise into his mouth.

Ronan was standing at the counter when he padded back into the kitchen, looking no less worse for wear, but a little more relaxed.

"Hey," he said, setting his mug down. "I was gonna give you five more minutes. Thought maybe you had a stroke or something."

There was a stack of buttered toast and a jar of peanut butter with a knife stuck in it, and a platter—not a plate—of bacon. Adam sat and reached out with shaking hands for a piece of toast.

A steaming mug was placed in front of him, and Ronan sat. He pushed a cow-spotted creamer pitcher that rested on four ceramic udders and a covered sugar bowl shaped like a chick in an egg toward him wordlessly.

Adam found his voice looking at them. "Sugar comes from chickens?"

Ronan's mouth twitched up into a half-smile. "Opal picked 'em out."

"Could've guessed."

He felt untethered. Ronan had given him a stoneware mug that said _High Octane,_ and he wrapped his hands around it like its warmth was the only thing anchoring him to his chair.

He looked up and found Ronan watching him, expression unreadable. "What?"

Ronan tapped his fingers against his own mug, a clay monstrosity Opal must have made. It looked like a mossy boulder. "Are you doing okay?"

Adam tried to summon up any incredulity at all, but his voice just came out like it had in the bathroom, cobwebby and creaky. "Am I _doing_ okay?"

Ronan ducked his head. "Stupid question. Sorry."

Adam shoved a whole piece of peanut butter toast into his mouth and washed it down with too-sweet coffee. After three more pieces of bacon and another piece of toast, he heard himself say, "I need you to ask you something, and I need you to be honest."

Ronan nodded, as if to say that was a given. It probably was. Adam's fingers tightened around his mug.

"That. . . nightmare," he started slowly. "That didn't start off as a nightmare, did it."

Ronan's eyes were on him, terribly blue and unblinking. "No."

"You were dreaming," Adam went on, his voice string-thin, "about me. About. . . " He was choking on it, and Ronan wasn't looking away. "About—"

"Yes," Ronan said simply.

Him and that word. _Yes_. For the second time it struck Adam like a point-blank shot to the head. He should need a license to say that word. There should at _least_ be some sort of strike system. "What—what does that mean?"

Ronan looked down into his mug. "Usually it means I miss you."

Half of Adam's coffee came up through his nose. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and said hoarsely, "What. The _fuck_." 

Ronan shifted in his seat, the only physical sign that he was even slightly uncomfortable with the conversation.

"Jesus Christ, Ronan—" Adam thumped himself on the chest, trying to clear his burning throat. "You can't just _say_ shit like that."

"You wanted me to be honest," Ronan said quietly.

"That doesn't make it okay!" Adam croaked. He felt like his heart was trying to climb out of his mouth and his stomach was trying to fall out his ass. "You _left_ me. Not even left me, you _ghosted_ me. _Dropped_ me. You don't get to—to dream up versions of me to _fuck_ because you _miss_ me, when you _threw me away_. That's such a—"

The word _violation_ died on the tip of his tongue, but Ronan seemed to hear it anyway. He was turning pink, blotches of color spreading high on his cheeks and at the tips of his ears. "Look, I'm sorry. I don't do it on purpose. It just happens, okay—"

Adam laughed helplessly, and it came out as more of a wheeze. "Of course, everything _just happens_ to you."

"I swear," Ronan said desperately, "I don't try to—I don't seek it out. I promise. And I _never_ bring you back. It's never more than just a dream."

"Just a dream. Ronan Lynch says it's _just a dream_." Adam jabbed his finger at the kitchen window, curtained against the midmorning sun. "Tell that to the body we just buried. How many other Discount Adam Parrishes have you brought back?"

It was a cheap shot and he knew it _(oh, you asshole, you monumental asshole, what is wrong with you?)_ but it landed just the same. Ronan looked sick. "Adam, I wouldn't."

It didn't feel good, seeing him like that. Adam let out a long, deep sigh, feeling the anger melt out of his bones and leave behind an empty, aching exhaustion.

"I know," he said, because he did.

"Adam," Ronan said, pleading.

" _Ronan_. I know."

Ronan looked down at his hands, squeezing tightly around his mug. After a moment he said, "I didn't—I didn't think before I said that."

"When have you ever," Adam muttered.

There was no bite in it. He said it purely out of habit—a barb he'd thrown at Ronan dozens of times without thinking, just part of their once-habitual sniping—but Ronan's face contorted and he looked back up at Adam, pained. "Can you stop with that shit?"

Adam swallowed, feeling his own face grow hot. "I," he said, then stopped.

"I told you, I know this is fucked." Ronan got up, took Adam's empty mug from the table in front of him, and brought it and his own to the counter for a refill. "I know you don't want to be here, I have no illusions about that. But I'm not gonna _fight_ with you, Adam. I don't have it in me anymore."

Shame washed over Adam in a prickly wave. It genuinely hadn't struck him until just now that Ronan hadn't bitten back at him once since he'd got here. Things were tense, things were strained—that was the nature of the beast—but for once it was _Ronan_ trying to ease them, and Adam trying to see how far they could stretch before they snapped.

Besides that—he _knew_ how much Ronan always hated to ask for help with his nightmares. A fleeting vision struck him: Ronan in the wee hours of the morning, collapsed and bloody against the door of the long barn, trying not to let his legs give out, hands shaking as he dialed Adam.

And what had been the first thing he said?

_Adam, please, don't hang up._

The lump settled down somewhere in his chest.

"I don't—I don't want to fight with you."

"Then for Christ's sake," Ronan said matter-of-factly as he poured, "quit acting like it."

He handed Adam's mug back and Adam took it, feeling properly scolded. He stirred in cream and sugar slowly while Ronan leaned back against the counter.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "I guess I'm not used to you being the grown-up out of the two of us."

Ronan shrugged. "Had to happen sometime."

He even _looked_ more grown-up, as surely as Adam must. Older. Wiser. His shoulders set differently. Even the tattoo, bursting vinelike out from beneath the collar of his shirt as it always had, didn't seem like a symbol of boyhood impulse anymore; he looked like a man changed by his child.

Which he was.

He lifted his cup to his mouth, and Adam saw where his shirt was stuck to his ribs, stiff and dark with blood.

That. That was something he could do.

"You want me to fix that up?"

"Hm?" Ronan glanced down. "Oh. No, I'll just. . . get it later."

Adam raised an eyebrow. "Really?" 

"Really. Don't worry about it."

"You gotten any better at it?"

Ronan huffed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. "Well, if you _must_ know," he drawled, "no, I'm still complete garbage."

"The more things change." Adam rose to his feet. "Come on, Scarecrow, let's put you back together."

"Adam, you don't have to—"

"Yes," Adam said, swiftly cutting off his protest, "I do."

He didn't say _I've been a complete fuckwit since I got here._ He probably didn't really have to, and he was already at the bottom of the stairs. He headed up, trusting that Ronan would follow.

A few seconds later he heard the solid _clink_ of Ronan's mug being set down on the counter.

 

* * *

 

Ronan eyed him through the steam that filled the bathroom. "How long has it been since you did this last?"

"On a person? A while." Adam nodded. "C'mon, put 'em back up."

Ronan lifted his arm, wincing, and crossed if over his chest, holding it at the elbow like he was stretching. His T-shirt had come loose under hot water without ripping off any more of his skin, and the gashes were clean, but deep and ugly, crawling almost up to his armpit in one place and just kissing the edge his tattoo in another.

"You want something to bite down on?"

"Ha." Ronan closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "Just do it."

"All right, count of three. One, two—"

"Oh, _fuck_ you," Ronan ground out through his teeth.

"Sorry."

He was careful with the needle and clamps, and Ronan's face smoothed out after a few stitches. He even opened his eyes a little to look down at Adam, cross-legged in his shorts on the floor of the tub while Ronan sat astride the lip. "Thank you," he said.

"Least I could do."

"No, the least you could do was answer the phone. You didn't have to be here."

Adam's hands stilled for a minute, and his eyes flicked up to Ronan. He felt his cheeks turn pink.

"Ronan," he said quietly, "there isn't a universe that exists where I didn't have to be here."

Ronan stared at him until he dropped his head again, self-conscious, and said, "Then the least _I_ could do is give you that explanation."

Poke in. Quick dip under the skin and up through the other side. Tie. Snip. "I think it's kinda water under the bridge at this point."

"You said I owe you."

"I was mad."

"You were right."

Something fluttered at the bottom of Adam's guts. He'd forgotten how _warm_ Ronan could get—he tried not to think about how this was the most he'd touched Ronan in years. "You sure you want to get into this now?" he asked. "I could do some real damage here."

The skin under Adam's hands flexed as Ronan shrugged as much as his position allowed. "Dunno when I'll get a chance like this again."

"I wouldn't think you'd _want_ one," Adam said conversationally. Poke. Dip. "This hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs."

"Adam."

That same something deep in his intestines started to bubble. He had wanted an explanation for so long. Now he was finally going to get one, and he was finding himself a little terrified. If Ronan finally told him _why_ , after all this time, he wouldn't have any reason to hate him any more.

And if he couldn't _hate_ Ronan. . .

But then he glanced up to see Ronan's face reflecting all the tension and worry he felt, then back down. Quietly, he said, "All right."

Up and out.

"The accident," Ronan started.

Tie, snip. He nodded.

"You remember what happened?"

There was something in how he said it that made Adam pause, needle just pressed into Ronan's skin. Then he pushed, and it was through. "Of course," he said. "Hit a deer."

"That's what you told me happened."

"Because it's what happened."

"You and I both know it's not."

Adam felt hot and cold all at once, as if Ronan had dunked him headfirst into a barrel of ice water with a high fever. He finished the stitches of the first gash in silence, and then looked up at Ronan again.

He didn't look hurt, or upset. This wasn't new information. "How long have you known?"

"Paramedics told me," Ronan said. It sounded like a confession.

Any anger Adam might feel at this was almost immediately extinguished by shame. Of course, of _course_. How many failures would it take before Adam got it through his head that he never could keep a secret from Ronan?

He felt his jaw straining, and Ronan watching him, waiting for the outburst. Adam started to reach up and scrub his bloody hands over his face, out of sheer force of habit, but stopped himself just in time. "Why—" He sighed. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"There were bigger things going on at the time." Ronan hitched his elbow back into place.

"Ronan—"

"Adam. It's okay. And that's not even. . . the point, really. I knew why you lied. I wasn't mad then, and I'm not now."

"Then why bring it up?" he snapped. "Just to make me feel like garbage, I guess."

Ronan was making that pained face again, and though Adam was starting to get familiar with it he was still reminded that not that long ago it would have been replaced with a snarl and a _Forget it, Parrish._ "No," he said. "Please, just. . . I've never said all of this out loud before, okay? Just. . . let me say it." He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "And keep going. I can't—I can't get this out if you're gonna look at me like that."

Adam stared at him, his mouth growing thinner and gluing itself shut against the things he wanted to say—things he shouldn't say right now, or maybe ever—and then he looked back down, and tied off his stitch.

"All right," he said. "I'm listening."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes I extended this into 3 chapters I know I'm the worst BUT part 3 is mostly written and it's gonna be so satisfying y'all I promise please just stay with me here
> 
> if you dug these, please drop me kudos or feedback!! i live for feedback!! (except wrt the field stitches, I have never given anyone field stitches in my bathtub and my research was entirely episodes of Supernatural, WikiHows, and other fanfics so I know there are probs inaccuracies)


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